Where Mathematics Come from by George Lakoff

Where Mathematics Come from by George Lakoff

Renowned linguist George Lakoff pairs with psychologist Rafael Nuez in the first book to provide a serious study of the cognitive science of mathematical ideas. . When you think about it, it seems obvious: The only mathematical ideas that human beings can have are ideas that the human brain allows. We know a lot about what human ideas are like from research in Cognitive Science. Most ideas are unconscious, and that is no less true of the mathematical ones. Abstract ideas, for the most part, arise via conceptual metaphor-a mechanism for projecting embodied (that is, sensory-motor) reasoning to abstract reasoning. This book argues that conceptual metaphor plays a central, defining role in mathematical ideas within the cognitive unconscious-from arithmetic and algebra to sets and logic to infinity in all of its forms: transfinite numbers, points at infinity, infinitesimals, and so on. Even the real numbers, the imaginary numbers, trigonometry, and calculus are based on metaphorical ideas coming out of the way we function in the everyday physical world. This book is about mathematical ideas, about what mathematics means-and why. The authors believe that understanding the metaphors implicit in mathematics will make mathematics make more sense. Moreover, understanding mathematical ideas and how they arise from our bodies and brains will make it clear that the brain's mathematics is mathematics, the only mathematics we know or can know.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780465037704
ISBN 10	0465037704
Title	Where Mathematics Come from
Author	George Lakoff
Condition	Unavailable
Publisher	Basic Books
Year published	2000-11-02
Number of pages	493
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable